伊斯兰教：文化与历史导论
English
Islam was founded in seventh-century Arabia through the prophethood of Muhammad, and spread within a century of its founding across the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and into Central Asia and the Iberian Peninsula. Today it is practiced by approximately 1.8 billion people across the world, making it the world’s second-largest religion. The civilization that Islam gave rise to — the Islamic Golden Age of the eighth through thirteenth centuries — was the most advanced in the world by many measures, preserving and extending the knowledge of ancient Greece, Persia, and India while making original contributions to mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and architecture that shaped the subsequent development of both Eastern and Western civilization. This introduction presents Islam from a cultural and historical perspective only, without doctrinal judgment or advocacy.
中文
伊斯兰教通过穆罕默德的先知使命在七世纪的阿拉伯创立，在创立后一个世纪内扩展到中东、北非、波斯，并进入中亚和伊比利亚半岛。今天全世界约有18亿人信仰伊斯兰教，使其成为世界第二大宗教。伊斯兰教所产生的文明——八至十三世纪的伊斯兰黄金时代——在许多衡量标准上是当时世界上最先进的，在保存和扩展古希腊、波斯和印度知识的同时，在数学、天文学、医学、哲学和建筑方面做出了原创性贡献，塑造了东西方文明此后的发展。本文仅从人文历史视角介绍伊斯兰教，不涉及教义评判或宗教传教。
The Islamic Golden Age
伊斯兰黄金时代
English
Between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, the Islamic world was the primary custodian and developer of the world’s accumulated intellectual heritage. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad — founded under the Abbasid Caliphate in the early ninth century — was the greatest center of learning in the world: a library, translation center, and research institution that systematically collected and translated texts from Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, and other languages into Arabic. The works of Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, and Ptolemy, which might otherwise have been lost to the European Middle Ages, survived and were extended through this institution.
The original contributions of Islamic Golden Age scholars were equally significant. Al-Khwarizmi, working in Baghdad in the ninth century, developed algebra — the word itself is derived from the title of his treatise, Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr — and introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeral system (including zero) to the Islamic world and from there to Europe. Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine was the standard medical textbook in European universities for five centuries. Al-Biruni made remarkably accurate calculations of the earth’s radius. Ibn al-Haytham developed the first systematic account of optics, correctly explaining how vision works. These are not peripheral contributions; they are foundational achievements in the history of human knowledge.
中文
八至十三世纪，伊斯兰世界是世界积累的智识遗产的主要托管者和发展者。巴格达的智慧宫——在九世纪初阿拔斯王朝下建立——是世界上最伟大的学习中心：一个图书馆、翻译中心和研究机构，系统地收集并将希腊语、波斯语、梵文和其他语言的文本翻译成阿拉伯语。亚里士多德、欧几里得、盖伦和托勒密的著作，可能本会在欧洲中世纪失传，通过这一机构得以保存和扩展。
伊斯兰黄金时代学者的原创贡献同样重要。花剌子密，九世纪在巴格达工作，发展了代数——这个词本身源自他的论文标题《还原与对消的简明之书》——并将印度-阿拉伯数字体系（包括零）引入伊斯兰世界，从那里传入欧洲。伊本·西那的《医典》是欧洲大学五个世纪的标准医学教科书。比鲁尼对地球半径进行了极为精确的计算。伊本·海赛姆发展了第一个系统性的光学理论，正确解释了视觉如何运作。这些不是边缘性的贡献；它们是人类知识史上的奠基性成就。
The Silk Road and East-West Connection
丝绸之路与东西方的联结
English
The Islamic world occupied, geographically and historically, the central position in the network of trade and cultural exchange that connected East Asia to the Mediterranean. The Silk Road — which was not a single road but a network of overland and maritime routes — passed through the heartlands of Islamic civilization, and Islamic merchants, scholars, and diplomats served as the primary intermediaries between China, India, Persia, and the Mediterranean world for centuries. The Four Great Inventions of China — paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass — reached Europe through the Islamic world. Indian mathematics, including the concept of zero, traveled the same route. Islamic civilization was not merely a conduit, however; at every stage it absorbed, developed, and contributed to the knowledge it transmitted.
Islam reached China through this same network. The Tang dynasty’s cosmopolitan capital Chang’an housed a mosque — the Great Mosque of Xi’an, parts of which survive today — and Muslim traders established communities along the Chinese coast. The Hui people, Chinese Muslims, represent one of the world’s most sustained examples of the integration of Islamic faith and practice into a non-Arabic cultural context. The encounter between Islam and Chinese civilization is part of the larger story of how the world’s great traditions have met, influenced each other, and developed in response to the encounter.
中文
伊斯兰世界在地理上和历史上占据了连接东亚与地中海的贸易和文化交流网络的中心位置。丝绸之路——不是一条单一的道路，而是一个陆路和海路路线网络——穿过伊斯兰文明的腹地，伊斯兰商人、学者和外交官在数百年间充当中国、印度、波斯和地中海世界之间的主要中间人。中国的四大发明——纸张、印刷术、火药和指南针——通过伊斯兰世界传入欧洲。印度数学，包括零的概念，走的是同一条路线。然而，伊斯兰文明不仅仅是一个导管；在每个阶段，它都吸收、发展并为它所传递的知识做出贡献。
伊斯兰教通过同一网络传入中国。唐代的世界性首都长安设有一座清真寺——西安大清真寺，其部分建筑至今仍在——穆斯林商人在中国沿海建立了社群。回族，中国穆斯林，代表了伊斯兰信仰和实践融入非阿拉伯文化背景的世界上最持续的例证之一。伊斯兰教与中国文明的相遇，是世界伟大传统相遇、相互影响并在相遇的回应中发展的更大故事的一部分。